Hellenistic romance,also called Greek romance adventure tale, usually with a quasi-historical setting, in which a virtuous heroine and her valiant lover are separated by innumerable obstacles of human wickedness and natural catastrophe but are finally reunited. A precursor of the modern novel, the Hellenistic romance is the source for classic love stories, such as those of Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe, Sappho and Phaon, and Daphnis and Chloe.Introduced in the 1st century BC, the form reached its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD in the works of writers such as Chariton, Xenophon, Longus, and Heliodorus. It combined elements of the imaginative rhetorical exercise, popular Alexandrian poems and tales of love and adventure, the erotic Milesian adventure tale, Utopian stories, and travel narratives. An example of the Hellenistic romance is Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe (2nd century), a tale of lovers who marry and quarrel but are finally reuniteda series of misadventures (e.g., jealous quarrels, kidnapping, shipwrecks, or bandits) but are eventually reunited and live happily together. Five complete romances have survived in ancient Greek (in the presumed chronological order): Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoë (1st century AD); Xenophon of Ephesus’s Anthia and Habrocomes, or Ephesiaca (2nd century AD; “The Ephesian Story”); Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon (2nd century AD); Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century AD; sometimes called “The Pastoral Story”); and Heliodorus’s Theagenes and Charicles, or Ethiopica (4th century AD; “The Ethiopian Story”). Written under the Roman Empire, all five are extended fictional narratives whose protagonists are two young lovers.

Testimonies from other authors and the growing number of papyrus discoveries show that the romance originated during the latter part of the Hellenistic Age (323–30 BC). Besides the five known complete romances, the titles (and sometimes plots) of at least 20 others have been identified. The oldest (1st century BC) is Ninus; it is named for the protagonist, the Assyrian king Ninus, whose consort was Semiramis (Sammu-ramat). Others include Antonius Diogenes’ Hyper Thoulēn apista (1st century AD; “The Wonders Beyond Thule”), which describes incredible adventures in the far north; Iamblichus’s Babyloniaca (2nd century AD; “Babylonian Stories”), a tale of exotic adventures and magic; and Lollianus’s Phoenicica (2nd century AD; “Phoenician Stories”), which is characterized by crude and direct realism and includes a scene of cannibalism.

The Greek romance furnished many motifs and themes to Latin narrative fiction (see Latin literature), of which the most important examples are Petronius’s Satyricon (1st century AD) and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (2nd century AD). The Greek romance, as it evolved through these Latin works, was the ancestor of the modern novel.

There are good discussions in B.E. Perry, The Ancient Romances (1967); Tomas Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity, rev. trans. (1983, reissued 1991; originally published in Swedish, 1980); B.P. Reardon, The Form of Greek Romance (1991); and Niklas Holzberg, The Ancient Novel (1995; originally published in German, 1986).